Hi,

I'm new to .NET remoting (and don't have DCOM experience either!), so
please bear with me...

I have created a windows service application that reads data from an RFID
reader (via serial port) and writes parts of that data to a database (MS
SQL server). So far, so good.

Now I need to create a GUI for that application which will basically be a
windows form with two grids on it, showing the data from the database. This
GUI application should be mainly running on the same workstation that the
service runs on, but it would be nice if it could be run on other
workstations as well (at the same time).

Now (finally!) here is where remoting comes in (I think): whenever new data
is written to the database, the service application should notify all
"watching" workstations about the newly arrived data so they can refresh
their display. I wouldn't want have the GUI "pull" the database for new
data every XXX seconds as I need almost immediate response time (not
real-time, though).

From my understanding, I should be able to solve this using .NET remoting.
I have just created a small "hello world" application and was going to dive
in deeper, when I noticed that there are way too many options to get it
right.

Maybe anyone has done a similar application and is willing to share some
thoughts? Or maybe even a professional remoting guy can jump in here and
put me in the right direction...

Thanks!
Jens

Hi Jens,

Remoting would indeed be a good solution to your problem.

The model you describe would work well - You would write a remotable object,
that would act as a server for communications with the workstations. This
remotable object would have one or more events, indicating the status of new
data updated (DataUpdate or such named event). The service that imports the
data would host this remotable object, as a remoting server.

In turn, all the workstation clients would marshal the remotable object from
the importing service, and subscribe to the DataUpdate event. When the
importing service gained new data, it would write to the db, as well as
informing the remotable object what the new data was. The remotable object
would process this, and trigger the DataUpdate event. Usign a custom-written
delegate, the event would contain the sufficient information required by the
workstation to display what had just been updated / received.

Hope that helps.


Regards,
Alvaro

"Jens Weiermann" <spamgoeshere (AT) wexman (DOT) com> wrote

hi Jens

as said earlier by Alvaro yu can use remoting as a best choice..

In situation yu said:

DataServices:
You can name the 2 services which yu use for accessing the data from the
Database using these services.
this willl be yur data ascccess layer.

Clients:
All the clients (the form based application) can connect to this remote
services through remoting and can fetch you the data needed as per the
clients form events.

Database:
The DataServices will now maintain all the connections , commands to connect
to the DB and access\modify the data.

CLient--->Dataservices-->Database.

You can also extend one more services if yu wish to hold the business
logics.
once yu introdude it will be like :
CLient--->Businesslogics(Services \Dll's)--->DataServices-->Database.

(once if yu feel that yu wanted to migrate to a web based remoting yu can
replaces the windows services with web services.)


Hope this is usefull .
Thanks
Senthil



"Alvaro Thompson" <albiro (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote

Jens,

We have several server / client notification processes that are coded
exactly as Alvaro has explained. Remoting works very well for this type of
situation.

Scott L.


"Alvaro Thompson" <albiro (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote